Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly women, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of checks and analysis to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed via each side of every cranium, and had been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the frequent observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any tooth.

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec break website.

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash site revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the decrease classes and maintain them in their place.

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